


Until the Stars Give Way

by SouthSideStory



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Domestic Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Incest, Physical Abuse, Rey and Kylo are the Worst Parents in the Galaxy™, Reylo Son, Sibling Incest, Tags May Change, Torture, dub-con, it includes incest; proven guilty in a court of law, possibly the darkest kid fic ever written, reylo daughter, spousal abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2018-12-05 05:37:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11571456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: The Force lured her to Tatooine, drew her to Kylo Ren for some higher purpose. It might not be apparent yet, but in time she’ll be able to see the whole picture. This concession she’s making, it’s a temporary sacrifice, not a lasting loss. Rey has to believe this, because if she doesn’t, she’s going to lose hope.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to my amazing betas deeppoeticgirl and ReyloTrashCompactor for all their help. I’m putting you ladies through the wringer with this one. 
> 
> VERY spoilery details on the warnings can be found in the notes below.

.

.

**PHASE 1.00 : DARK MATTER**

_matter that cannot be seen_

_detectable only by its gravitational effects_

_on subject bodies_

OR

_the Force moves through every living thing_

.

.

She dreams of a desert at dusk. It’s too fair to be Jakku, beautiful in its bleakness. The landscape is flat, no golden dunes in sight, the sand as pale as sun-bleached bones. Binary suns dominate the sky, hovering over the horizon, equal in size but uneven. The higher star shines blindingly white, the other a dull red. Both sink into the sand—first the dark sun, then her brighter brother—as twilight fades into the dark.

Rey wanders through the wilderness, and she can sense that she’s alone, the only living thing to brave this place in centuries. Her warm breath stirs the cold desert air, and her steps leave footprints in the sand. Surreal marks imprinted on this dreamscape, proof of her existence.

The heavens look down, bearing witness to her journey. Luke taught her how to find patterns in the night sky, first on Ahch-To, then on Ynthica. Now she sees figures shaped out of a thousand distant stars, and she feels like she’s being watched. A poor, lonesome creature walking an endless wasteland without direction.

Rey knows this is only a vision, maybe a glimpse into a past long dead or a future that will someday be. It doesn’t much matter, whether she’s visiting a time long ago or a time yet to come. To a primordial thing like the Force, which moves in circles more than lines, time means very little.

 _Come_ , whispers a soft voice. Familiar as the mother Rey has nearly but not quite forgotten, whose sweet lullaby is imprinted on her heart. She can’t remember the lyrics anymore, but she occasionally hums herself to sleep with the melody on her tongue.

 _Come here_ , says the voice again, stronger this time. _Come to Tatooine_.

.

.

He dreams of a desert at dawn. Golden light breaking over the horizon, slowly bringing color back to a dark world. Sibling suns rise, one after the other, the morning born twice over.

 _I’m home,_ Kylo thinks, before he can push that traitorous thought away.

Because Tatooine belongs to Ben Solo, not him. Kylo is a living weapon, an instrument of the Supreme Leader and the Force, and weapons do not need homes.

He can feel the warmth of sunlight on his face, and Kylo realizes that he isn’t wearing his mask. Alone in this familiar desert, he walks across the dunes, bare-faced and aimless. Drifting but not lost.

.

.

 _I’m not your teacher_ , Luke always insists, but he’s the closest thing to a master she’s got. (If not her only option, but Rey prefers not to think about Kylo Ren’s offer to instruct her in the ways of the Force.)

After two weeks of wandering Tatooine in her sleep, she finally works up the courage to say, “I’ve been having strange dreams. Visions, I think.”

Luke was already perfectly still because she interrupted him in the middle of meditation, but his stillness changes from peaceful to tense in a moment. Without opening his eyes, he asks, “What do you think the Force is trying to show you?”

Rey sits across from him, nudges his crossed legs with her booted foot, and says, “No mystery there. The message is pretty clear. I’m supposed to go somewhere—alone.”

That catches his attention. Luke looks at her in the way that always makes her feel like she was caught doing something wrong. “You’re not going to, of course,” he says. “That would be hugely reckless. Even for you.”

“Aren’t you always saying I should listen when the Force tells me something?” Rey asks. “Well I’m listening for once. You should be proud.”

“I’d rather be disappointed in a living apprentice than proud of a dead one,” Luke says.

Rey smiles, because he actually called her his _apprentice_. “I’ll be fine. If the Force wants me there, it can’t be for a bad reason, right?”

Luke isn’t smiling, though. “The Force plays a much bigger game than you and I do, Rey. The welfare of one human girl means very little in the face of the galaxy's fate. And you’re forgetting something crucial: the Force may be good, but its darkness is inseparable from its light.”

.

.

Kylo tries to hide his visions from the Supreme Leader, terrified that if his master discovers he’s been dreaming of Tatooine, of the truest home Ben Solo ever knew, that he’ll be punished. But his mind is always open to Snoke’s, no matter how Kylo tries to keep his thoughts to himself, and it doesn’t take long for the truth to come out.

Now he kneels before his master, biting back cries as Snoke pets his face, cold fingers brushing his cheek as he probes Kylo’s mind. One touch gentle, the other violent.

“You were planning to sneak away,” the Supreme Leader accuses. “To go back to that desert without my permission.”

Kylo squeezes his eyes shut against the pain. A sharp, invasive push behind his eyes, a violation of what little privacy he has left. He’s been stripped to the skin before, but that kind of nakedness is nothing next to this.

He remembers Rey, bound to an interrogation chair, struggling and fighting tears as he sifted through her memories.

 _I hurt her just like this_.

Snoke withdraws from his mind and Kylo whimpers in relief. “Your weakness is sickening,” he says.

Kylo bows his head. “I’m—I’m sorry, Master.”

“Don’t hide from me again,” Snoke warns.

“I won’t,” Kylo swears, but this is a lie, and he can only hope that his master doesn’t notice.

.

.

No one from the Resistance knows her whereabouts, because this off-world venture hasn’t been sanctioned by either the general or her master. Luke and Leia, for all the love between them, rarely agree on anything, but they were both certain that she should stay on Ynthica. Listening to them would be safer, more sensible. She can’t, though. Not when the Force is calling to her like this. Singing to something in her blood, in her bones, impossible to ignore.

Maz once told her that the belonging she sought was ahead, and staying behind now won't help her move forward.

.

.

He’s going to be punished when he returns to his master, but Kylo refuses to think on that just now. If he dwells on his fear, he’ll lose the courage to do this.

He arrives on Tatooine in the middle of the night. Without quite meaning to, he picks out the constellations Uncle Luke taught him in another life—here is the Krayt Dragon and there is the Scurrier’s Horn, Little Sister holding Big Brother’s hand. Kylo walks all night, until dawn steals the stars, his uncle’s lessons fading with the burgeoning light.

A glowing ribbon appears out of nowhere, running across the ground in a white line, twisting too far ahead for Kylo to see its destination.

.

.

Dawn is just breaking over the desert when Rey lands. She wanders the dunes, carrying nothing but her lightsaber lance and a canteen of water, following the whispers of the Force and her own instincts.

Then she sees it: a scarlet string, running across the sand in an impossibly long and convoluted line, disappearing over the horizon.

.

.

The white lead vanishes as abruptly as it appeared, and in its place stands Rey.

She grabs her lance and ignites it—a fine weapon, as bright and beautiful as its owner—and rushes toward him, just as he draws his lightsaber. Their blades meet, beams of white and red locking together, and Kylo smiles, because now he understands why he’s been brought here. His long search is finally over.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the tags may change, so please look over them as well as my notes with every chapter if they’re of concern to you! Several will be important to pervasive themes, and so we’ll be dealing with them right out the gate, starting with the next chapter. 
> 
> Extremely spoilery details ahead!
> 
> Please note that the warnings for dub-con, domestic violence, and emotional/physical/spousal abuse are all descriptors for Rey and Kylo’s relationship in this fic, so if reading Reylo in this context could be harmful to you, this probably won’t be your cup of tea. 
> 
> The premise for this story is essentially that the Force draws Rey and Kylo together for the welfare of the galaxy without concern for their health or happiness. To be frank, this is a story of dysfunctional, abusive love. And like such relationships in real life, there will be good times and bad times, moments of tenderness and moments of great hurt and violence. This is not black and white. If anything, this is a worst-case scenario, but hopefully one that speaks some difficult truths.
> 
> Regarding the incest tag: this is a multi-generational story, and yes, the incest tag is there for a relationship between the Reylo son and daughter. As we used to say: don’t like, don’t read.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please mind the warnings and tags. They're already starting to become relevant in this chapter, and I would like to keep my potential readers as safe as possible. :)

.

.

**PHASE 1.01 : RESONANCE**

_a gravitational phenomenon_

_in which orbiting objects affect each other’s motion_

_in a specific pattern_

OR

_there is no chaos; there is harmony_

.

.

Kylo watches Rey sleep. Her bandaged chest rises and falls with the even rhythm of her breaths. A frown tugs at her mouth, as if, even while at rest, she’s unhappy to be subjected to his presence. Doctor Selinos has already tended to her injuries, an array of burns and bruises from their battle. Kylo refused treatment for his own wounds, a choice made more from calculation than stubbornness. The pain keeps him alert, wary, and it reminds him that this girl is his enemy.

Two years ago, Rey left him with his face cleaved in half, bleeding out in the snow as Starkiller collapsed around him, but Kylo remembers that night as vividly as if it were yesterday. The impossible cold on his bare cheeks; the sting of his injuries; the scavenger’s predatory expression as she advanced, blue lightsaber in hand, empowered by such obvious, unadulterated hatred that he was certain his wretched life was over. Maybe it should have relieved him when the ground collapsed between them, but Kylo could only feel disappointment.

Now he’s overwhelmed by the urge to reach out and touch Rey’s face. To reassure himself that he has her at last, this girl who always seems to escape him. Instead, he tightens the bonds on her wrists.

She stirs just as he finishes adjusting the restraints, blinks bleary eyes at him, then looks around the sterile, white room. “Am I your guest again?” Rey asks.

Kylo fights the desire to smile. She’s flippant at the worst of times. It’s absurd, really, the bravado she manages even when she’s terrified.

“We’re aboard the _Finalizer_ ,” he says. “How do you feel?”

Rey jerks at her restraints so that the metal bedframe shakes. “Like an animal in a cage.”

When he doesn’t respond, she asks, “What are you going to do with me?”

He should kill her, Kylo knows that, but the simple truth of the matter is that he doesn’t _want_ to, and he isn’t sure why. He’s been weeding out any trace of the Jedi from this galaxy for half his life. Uprooting power and potential before it could flourish never paralyzed him until now.

And if he should want to kill anyone, it’s this girl. He’s been looking for her since she was a child, when she slipped through his fingers the first time.

Kylo presses the button on the side of bed that releases the restraints. “You still have a lot to learn.”

Rey sits up, rubbing at her wrists, scowling. “I have a teacher now,” she says, but there’s something in her voice, something he can use. A subtle hint of hesitation and bitterness.

“And he’s eager to help you?” Kylo asks.

When she glances away, that’s answer enough.

He reaches for her, catches her by the chin, makes her look at him. “It wouldn’t be like that with me, Rey. I’d show you things you’ve never imagined. I’d indulge every curiosity you have, answer every question, before you knew what to ask for.”

“I’m not like you,” she says, “and I don’t want your help.”

Rey jerks her chin out of his grasp and scrambles from the bed. She’s dressed in nothing but grey, medcenter-issued pants and the bandages binding her small chest, but she seems unbothered by immodesty.

When Kylo stalks around the bed, she rifles through the nearest drawer and pulls a sharp silver tool from it. A pitiful weapon compared to the lightsaber he has at his belt, but she stabs at him with it anyway.

Kylo catches her wrist and twists her arm behind her back, squeezing hard enough to make her drop the instrument. “Then let me put this another way,” he says. “You _will_ join me, or the First Order will destroy the Resistance base on Ynthica.”

Her eyes go wide and she rips her arm from his grasp. “How do you know about Ynthica?”

“We received the intel just this morning,” he lies. “The Supreme Leader was going to order a strike, but he’s decided that your cooperation is more valuable than one base.”

His master has known about Ynthica for months, and instead of attacking the Resistance outright, the First Order has been infiltrating it with spies and slowly extracting useful information. But Rey has no way to know any of this.

She falters, and he can see that for a moment—just a moment—she is so repulsed by him that she’d rather sacrifice her comrades than become his ally.

He crowds her against the wall and slams his fist on the cool metal beside her head. The ringing sound it makes is satisfying, and the noise calms him. “You have to think about this? You hate me that much?”

Rey stares up into his mask, unflinching. “I do,” she says, and something in the heat of her honest loathing both pleases and infuriates him.

“Careful,” he says. “Hate leads to suffering, or didn’t my uncle tell you that?”

Kylo removes his right glove, stuffs it into his pocket, and cups her cheek. She’s so warm, flushed beneath his palm, and it’s impossibly sweet to feel another person’s skin against his own. Rey jerks away from him, but she has nowhere to go, trapped between his body and the wall. He touches her throat, fingers playing lightly across her pulse point. She’s so alive, so vibrant. Such a survivor.

“Stop that,” she hisses.

He reaches with the softest, gentlest of mental intrusions and catches a glimpse of the inner-workings of her heart. Rey despises him with a passion, this monster who has hounded her across the galaxy for years. If only she had her lance, she’d stab him right now. And she hates it when he touches her, because, beneath the disgust, there’s a part of her that craves contact—even from a creature like him. No, _especially_ from a creature like him.

Rey shakes her head, as if that will expel him from her mind.

He wants to keep looking, to sift through her memories and learn everything there is to know about this woman—but when he reaches again, Kylo comes up against the wall of her will, a barrier he can’t seem to push past.

“Do that again and I _will_ kill you,” Rey promises.

“Is that so?”

Kylo takes off his helmet and sets it aside on the counter. Rey’s hard expression slips, her gaze flickering across the scar on his face.

“You should find a new doctor,” she says. “Whoever worked on you doesn’t know bacta from water.”

Kylo leans down until they’re so close that he could count the freckles on her cheeks. He slides his fingers from her throat to her sharp collarbone, then lower, until he’s teasing the bandages that wrap her chest. Rey trembles, and he doesn’t need to look into her mind to know that her shivering isn’t from fear. It’s almost pitiful, how hungry she is to be touched.

Rey looks away, face flushed pink, and Kylo drags his fingers down the middle of her chest—too lightly to disturb the burn beneath her bandages—and whispers, “You like this.” He marvels at the strange truth he’s discovered as his touch drifts to her bare belly.

Rey pushes him in the stomach, right where her lance grazed him, and Kylo stumbles backward, growling. The burn stings fiercely, and this wave of fresh pain ignites his temper. He curses, shouts, grabs the nearest chair and flings it across the room. It crashes into some medical machine and sets the thing off beeping furiously.

The girl just looks at him, unimpressed and unafraid. “Are you quite done?” she asks.

Kylo grabs his helmet, puts it back on, and takes Rey by the arm. “You’re coming with me.”

He pulls her through the doorway, but Rey says, “I’m half-naked! You can’t drag me across a ship like this.”

Kylo stops, takes off his cloak and drapes it around her shoulders. Then he grabs her again and says, “There. That’ll do for now.”

“Stop pawing at me.” Rey wrenches away from him, but she follows dutifully enough, and that’s more acquiescence than he expected from this hard-headed girl.

He takes her to the bridge. Hux frowns when he sees the disheveled, barefoot hostage striding into his command center, drawing the attention of his officers. “Ren! Get her out of here.”

Kylo says, “I don’t take orders from you, general.”

Hux’s pallid face twists into an expression between disapproval and fear, but he says nothing more.

Kylo leads Rey to the viewport. Space stretches out in every direction, a black sea scattered with stars, engulfing them.

“Why did you bring me here?” Rey asks. She holds the cloak around herself more tightly, like she might be seeking the latent warmth of his body from its fabric.

“Because I want you to see what you’re meant for.” Kylo braces his hand over her head, against the transparisteel, and lowers his voice so that only Rey can hear him. “If you’d stop fighting me, this galaxy could be ours.”

Rey touches the viewport, her gaze set straight ahead, unreadable. Without ever looking at him, she says, “I don’t suppose I have much choice.”

.

.

The Force lured her to Tatooine, drew her to Kylo Ren for some higher purpose. It might not be apparent yet, but in time she’ll able to see the whole picture. This concession she’s making, it’s a temporary sacrifice, not a lasting loss.

Rey has to believe this, because if she doesn’t she’s going to lose hope.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to deeppoeticgirl and ReyloTrashCompactor for their help as betas! As well as to all the lovely people who commented on the previous chapter. I realize that this story is a dark one, and not the kind a lot of people would wish to read, so feedback is more appreciated than ever. If you have any questions about *why* I'm writing this, please take a look at my response to the first comment on Chapter 1. :)
> 
> On a more technical note, the chapter lengths are pretty short right now, but I expect that they're going to grow longer (and vary) a lot as the story goes along.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, deeppoeticgirl, for your help with cleaning up this chapter. And I'm so grateful to all the people who have been leaving kudos and comments on this story. You guys are the best!
> 
> Please see the notes below for spoilery details on the change in tags.

.

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**PHASE 1.02 : EXTINCTION**

_the dimming of a star’s light_

_when it lies low on the horizon_

OR

_evil is a word used by the ignorant and the weak_

_the dark side is about survival_

.

.

Rey’s quarters on Eridox Base adjoin Kylo Ren’s. It’s a presumptuous intimacy, and one she doesn’t have to consider for long to understand.

She explores the colorless suite, first examining the collection of simple black clothing that has been stowed in her wardrobe, then poking through the well stocked cupboards. Rey nibbles on crisps as she wanders her rooms, and when the snack is gone, she tosses the bag, licks her fingers, and wipes her hands on her pants.

All of the furniture here is well made, if plain and rigid, clearly constructed for function over fashion or comfort. Everything shines, spotlessly clean--no doubt the thankless work of service droids--but it’s utterly lacking in character. Even though Rey hasn’t seen anyone else’s quarters, she’s willing to bet that every upscale room on this base is full of identical furnishings, all black and inflexible.

She considers sitting on an ugly couch, but ends up pacing the suite instead. Kylo went to speak with his Supreme Leader, to deliver the news of her cooperation, but that was over two hours ago.

Rey knows there are five stormtroopers stationed right outside her door, ready to turn their blasters on her should she try to leave. With some creativity and a little luck, she could probably overpower them, but where would that get her? Still lost in the middle of an enemy fortress, outnumbered and outgunned. Should she get caught trying to escape, the consequences could be devastating to the Resistance, and she’s so far beyond the reach of her comrades that there’s no hope of anyone coming for her this time.

She thinks of Finn--her brave, beautiful friend who risked returning to the place of his own subjugation just to save her sorry neck. He’s the best of men, the closest thing to family Rey has had since her parents abandoned her on Jakku, and she misses him already. He’d come for her if he could, she knows that, but her own poor judgment has made rescue impossible.

Rey sits on the couch, perched at the edge of a stiff cushion, and waits for Kylo to return.

.

.

It’s been hours since he requested an audience with the Supreme Leader, and Snoke’s personal guards have yet to allow him inside the audience chamber.

Kylo taps his fingers against his leg, itching to pull his lightsaber. “This is important,” he says-- _again_ \--but the guards only stand utterly still, impassive, refusing to answer.

Then the doors open, and when Kylo walks inside, he wishes that he was still in the hall, waiting on the punishment that he now has to face.

It’s cold, dark, the only illumination coming from a small skylight overhead. Sunset creeps into the chamber, its dull red presence breaking through the shadows. The Supreme Leader is surrounded by it, steeped in it, his twisted figure cast in the color of a fading sun.

“You lied to me,” Snoke says. “You lied, and you disobeyed my orders.”

Kylo kneels before his master loses patience and pushes him to the floor with the Force. “I’m sorry, Supreme Leader, and I accept whatever punishment you believe is fitting.”

If Snoke is in a perfunctory mood, he might be isolated in his detention chamber, or subjected to an hour in the interrogation chair with only the imperial guards for company. But he could suffer Force lightning or worse if Snoke is feeling particularly malicious.

“Aren’t you going to tell me about your success first?” He’s suddenly soft-spoken, almost gentle. “General Hux tells me that you captured Skywalker’s apprentice. The scavenger.”

“Yes,” Kylo says. “I believe the Force brought us both to Tatooine for that purpose.”

Snoke laughs. “Now which is it, Kylo Ren: do you take responsibility for your disobedience, or are you blaming it on the machinations of the Force?”

“I--” Kylo swallows and looks around the room, wishing he might find some handhold to help him climb out of here. “I don’t know.”

Snoke leans back in his chair, apparently satisfied. “Now, tell me about the girl.”

Kylo takes a deep breath. He’s kept this secret long enough, and now that Rey is here, it’s bound to come out anyway. “She’s Seramé Palpatine’s daughter. I’m sure of it.”

Snoke’s calm sours in an instant, and Kylo feels the heat of his rage, roiling through the Force. “I thought you killed the last of Darth Sidious’s ilk.”

“I--I tried. The woman and her husband were no challenge, but… the girl--”

“Would have been a child when I sent you after the emperor’s daughter. Are you telling me you let her go?”

“No! I knew she existed, but I never found her,” Kylo says. “And until I probed Rey’s mind on Starkiller, I couldn’t be sure that she was the same girl.”

“But she is,” Snoke says. “She is Sidious’s granddaughter and heir. Far more dangerous than her mother ever was, because she possesses the power of the Force. You’ve known this for the last two years, and you deliberately hid it from me.”

There’s nothing Kylo can say to defend himself; it’s all true.

“I’ve been too soft on you,” Snoke says, so quietly that his words nearly dissipate in the bloody gloom of this chamber. “I think it’s time you learned a hard lesson.”

.

.

It’s midnight by standard hours, and later than that in Eridox’s time, when Rey hears Kylo return to his rooms. A door slams, then one thing after another crashes against the wall. Furniture being thrown, she thinks. There’s a shimmer of glass breaking, what might be his helmet clattering to the duracrete floor.

This isn’t any of her business. So what if he’s angry? Or hurt. It serves him right, after all the pain he’s caused, to shoulder a little of it himself.

He carries more than _a little_ already, though, and Rey knows it. She saw it, felt it, that day on Starkiller, when she turned Kylo’s interrogation back on him and got a good look at his secrets. What she found has haunted her ever since: a heart being pulled in divergent directions; a man torn apart by his own choices, determined to succeed yet always falling short; and fear. Such fear, that he would fall to the light side. That in falling, he would fail to uphold Darth Vader’s legacy, the strength of the darkness that he could never quite reach.

For a short while, it gave Rey compassion for this strange man who had hunted her. But then Kylo murdered his father on that bridge and made a true monster of himself. So she shouldn’t care if she can hear him crying on the other side of that door.

Rey squeezes her eyes shut, sends a quick curse up to the Force for bringing her here, and says, “Dammit.”

The door between their suites is locked, but it only takes a minute of hot-wiring the control panel for it to open.

On the other side, she finds Kylo sitting on the floor, without his helmet or his robes, pulling at the collar of his shirt, frantic and gasping. His breaths are coming too shallow, too short, and she can see marks all over his neck. Perfectly even cuts that could only be purposefully inflicted, still bleeding. She stands, frozen, as he strips out of his shirt, then claws at his arms, reopening the wounds there. Larger and deeper than the ones on his throat, layered over the burns she gave him yesterday. A hundred older, faded scars shine through the new, smooth and silver, or ragged half-healed pink. Some are the messy remainders of battle injuries, but most are straight-edged with the precision of careful, intentional abuse.

It isn’t until he’s half-naked and breathing easier that Kylo even seems to register her presence. Then he flinches and says, “Get out.”

Rey goes to the ‘fresher, grabs a first-aid kit from the cabinet, and comes back with a small bottle of bacta. “Maybe if you didn’t want me to see you at your worst, you shouldn’t have stuck me in the room next to yours.”

“I said get out!” Kylo jumps to his feet and knocks the bottle out of her hands. It crashes to the floor and spills everywhere. “And stop--stop staring at me like that.”

Her compassion dies as quickly as it flared to life. “Like what? Like I pity you? Just look at yourself.” She waves a hand at his chest. “You _choose_ to live like this. How could I not pity you?”

Kylo pushes her, right where her tender, newly-mended wound is. Rey grunts, then shoves him back, but it doesn’t move him (of course it doesn’t, the solid, rough-hewn bastard that he is) so she slaps him across the face. He smirks--the same subtle, fleeting, half-smile that he flashed at her when he said _we’ll see_ on Starkiller. That, more than anything, is what drives her to slap him again.

It feels good. Hitting him drowns out her worries, her helplessness. All the loud, empty places inside her that echo with her shortcomings--they go quiet when she strikes him, this beautiful, hideous creature who has imprisoned her again.

“Maybe you should save some pity for yourself,” Kylo says. “You’re a captive here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“And what do you do with captives, Kylo? Do you take whatever you want from all of them?” Rey stands straighter and asks, “Is that why my room is next to yours?”

Kylo bites the inside of his lip; she can see it, the small divot where his plush mouth should still be full. Then he looks her up and down, his gaze lingering on her throat, then her breasts, for a fleeting moment before he releases her.

“Get out,” Kylo says again, and this time Rey listens.

.

.

He doesn’t see Rey again for days. He hears her well enough, stomping around the suite next to his, then shouting and pounding on the door that separates their quarters--now doubly reinforced so that it will only open from his side. “Let me out!” she screams. “Let me out of here!”

Kylo leaves, and makes sure to close the door carefully, quietly. If she’s too angry to notice his presence fading, she might keep shouting at his empty room, maybe even wear herself out before he gets back. It’s a petty cruelty, one he doesn’t enjoy, but it’s wearing his conscience thin, listening to her curse him to whatever hell scavengers know of.

The Supreme Leader’s orders--delivered by his guards, between a hundred shallow cuts to Kylo’s skin--were clear. Simple cooperation from Rey isn’t enough, if she’s to live.

“Convince her to serve me,” Snoke said. “She can start by sharing everything she knows about Skywalker and the Resistance.”

So Kylo restricts Rey to her quarters, isolating her from any contact, in the hope that boredom and loneliness will wear her down.

On the seventh day, when he finally opens the door between their suites, he finds her curled up on the floor under a blanket, her brown hair unbound, spilling across the duracrete. There’s exhaustion in the curve of her shoulders, the limp fall of her arm, stretched above her head.

His voice catches in his throat when he says,“Rey,” same as it always does.

_Rey_ , unknowing heir of a Sith lord, child of parents murdered by his own hand, the girl always too far away to reach. _Rey_ , whose name feels so intimate, so vast and pure, that he doesn’t deserve to speak it.

She sits up, runs a hand through her hair, and frowns when her fingers snag on a tangle. There’s a dullness to her gaze, an unhealthy flush on her cheeks, almost like she’s feverish.

“What do you want?” she asks, her voice rough, huskier than usual. Hoarse from all the shouting, from begging to be set free.

Kylo clenches his fists and reminds himself it’s for the best, if this is what it takes to earn her collaboration, if a week alone saves her from his master’s wrath. _Get up_ , he almost says, but she looks so pitiful that it twists at a low place in his gut. He can’t make her do even one more thing, no matter how simple.

So Kylo sits in the nearest chair, takes off his helmet, and says, “The Supreme Leader requires--” No, that isn’t right. “He demands that you give up all information about Luke Skywalker and the Resistance.”

Rey sits straighter, lifts her chin, and meets his gaze with a steady, uncompromising ferocity that almost hurts to look on. It’s blinding, the brightness of the Force around her, the strength of her will. She burns in the light, a star at its most luminous.

“I can’t do that.” Rey says. Like she’s forgotten why she’s here, and how, and what’s keeping her trapped. Every line of her is held firm, unshaken, indomitable. Kylo hates to break that, to break _her_.

He leans forward, gripping his helmet so hard that the Force responds, shivering through the metal, on the verge of crushing it in his hands. “You betray the Resistance, or you kill them all with your silence. These are your choices.”

Rey’s hard stare never wavers. “Those aren’t choices at all.”

“Maybe not, but they’re what you have.” He says it as gently as he can without softening it, this sliver of the truth that he can stand to spare.

The heat of her light only grows greater, white and blazing in Force, and he can feel, even without trying to reach toward her mind, that Rey wants to protect her loved ones above all else.

Until righteous determination gives way to something darker, colder. She’ll take his saber and slice him from navel to neck this time, steal a ship, flee to Ynthica and sound an alarm before the First Order has a chance to attack. She’d rather die fighting rather than give up, than give in to the likes of _him_ \--

Kylo stands, so that he’s looming over her, casting her in his shadow, still sitting on the floor. “Don’t be an idiot. You’d die trying to run, and then your friends would die for your arrogance. Is that what you want?”

It’s a lie, all lies, except that she _could_ die trying to escape him, and that’s something Kylo won’t tolerate. He’s finally gotten his hands on her, and he intends to keep her this time.

He sees it before he feels it, her strength dwindling, resignation taking the steel from her straight back. Then the Force dims around her, defeat quelling its radiance, until she sits with her arms wrapped around her knees, the light gone out around her.

Rey doesn’t look at him when she asks, “What do you want to know?”

She’ll evade where she can, of course, but maybe there’ll be enough truth in her lies to take to his master. Enough to keep her alive.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snoke orders his guards to torture Kylo in this chapter. The scene isn’t shown on-page, but its after effects are seen from Rey’s POV.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's reading, leaving kudos, and commenting. I smile like an idiot whenever I get a notification from ao3! I've got to give a special thank you to my beta deeppoeticgirl for her tremendous help cleaning up this chapter. You're the best of the best, dear.

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**PHASE 1.03 : EVENT HORIZON**

_the invisible boundary around a black hole_

_beyond which nothing can escape_

_not even light_ _—_

_a point of no return_

OR

_those who mastered dark power_ became _dark power_

_and some of them were Jedi_

.

.

It took Rey two years to earn her place among the Resistance, but she betrays it in less than an hour. Finn, her first and dearest friend; Poe and General Organa; the soldiers and pilots who defend the galaxy; the mechanics, techs, and doctors who keep the Resistance running; Luke, the teacher who only once called her his apprentice: they gave her a home, and in return she endangers them.

Rey sits on her ugly black couch with Kylo, answering question after question. Lying when possible, hedging when dishonesty would invite suspicion, and telling the truth only when she must. No, she doesn’t know of any Resistance spies on this base. She isn’t sure where Luke Skywalker is, because he’d been on the verge of taking a mission alone when she left Ynthica. Yes, General Organa was planning a strike on the First Order’s smaller outfit at Daxam IV, but she called it off at the last moment.

“And why would she do that?” Kylo asks.

Rey shrugs. “I dunno. My pay grade isn’t high enough to be in on that conversation.”

Kylo’s smile shapes his soft mouth into something sharp. “You’re a Jedi. Who’s more important than you?”

When Rey doesn’t answer, he leans closer, until she can feel his warm breath on her cheek as he whispers, “Give me something to work with. Something useful.” She feels him nudging closer as much as she sees it. “Please.”

This great, hulking beast of a man, scourge of the First Order, is _begging_ , and fear flares to life in Rey’s belly at witnessing it.

She squeezes her knees together to keep her legs from trembling. “I’m trying.”

He catches her by her chin, turns her face toward his, and says, “It’s going to get worse. The Supreme Leader expects great things from you. Service to him, and to the First Order. These are the first steps, but soon he’ll want your lightsaber, your loyalty _—_ ”

“What did you say?”

Kylo frowns. “That you’ll have to submit eventually. If Leader Snoke considers you irrelevant, you forfeit your life.”

That isn’t what Rey was asking for, but she can’t say what she meant. _These are the first steps;_ she’s heard that before, on Takodana, when she touched the Skywalker lightsaber. Now Kylo, the last, unlikely hope for the new Skywalker line, has spoken those words to her again. She doesn’t know what to make of it, but it chills her, raises gooseflesh on her arms.

He’s still holding her, and for once, Rey doesn’t feel the need to pull away.

“You’ve cornered me. I don’t have any choice,” she says. “What do you want me to say? ‘Congratulations, Lord Ren, you’ve won me over to the First Order’?”

Kylo swallows heavily enough that Rey can see the apple of his throat move. His eyes seem brighter than usual, more brown than black. Softer, almost as soft as his voice when he whispers, “Your lies don’t serve you any better than they serve me. I need you to give more than you’re giving now, for your own safety.” Then he glances away, his cheeks suddenly pink. “I need you to live.”

Rey leans back, breaking his touch, gently, and breathes in, then out. _The Force lives in your breath,_ Luke always says. _More than anywhere else._

She feels the light, tugging at her, and strangely, it’s drawing her toward Kylo, not away from him. He must sense it as well as she does, because his lips tremble, his jaw flexes, and he shivers all over. Just like the day he interrogated her, when she reached into his mind and unburied his deepest secret: that the strength he’s afraid to fall short of is the strength of the dark side; that he feels it, always, a low-burning pull to the light.

“Don’t be afraid,” Rey says, and it isn’t until the words have fallen from her tongue that she remembers Kylo saying the same thing, when the darkness bound them together on Starkiller. “I feel it too.”

She smiles at him, cheeky and taunting, the way he smiled at her then. And it’s satisfying, so satisfying to see his mouth fall open, to watch the way his eyes look her up and down with awe, like she’s the most majestic thing he’s ever seen.

Rey takes his hand, because she can feel it within him, a flicker of the light. When she touches him, that trace of the Force strengthens, grows, fans itself into a spark that catches between them.

_This is it_ , Rey thinks. _This is why the Force brought me here._

Kylo leans closer, until their foreheads touch, and she can’t help it, she reaches up to cup his face, to bask in the heat of his body, the heat of the light. He grasps her arm with one hand and cradles her head with the other, slides his fingers through her unbound hair and murmurs her name. He says it again and again _—_ until his mouth is on hers, and he’s pushing her to the couch, touching her throat, her collarbone, her breast while they taste each other.

It feels good, too much, painfully sweet. Like a whole portion after three days starving. Like the first proper bath she could remember. Like seeing the _green_ of Takodana, before Kylo arrived and hurt her and stole her away _—_

“Stop,” she says, hissing it into his kiss. “Kylo _—_ ”

He jerks away and sits up, still kneeling between her legs. He bites at his kiss-bruised lips, his gaze roaming over her, lingering on her mouth and her disheveled clothes. There’s nothing light about the heat roiling through him now, only a desire to keep touching her, to kiss her until she kisses back again.

Rey sits up, tugging her shirt back down, but that only brings her closer to him, and she’s aware more than ever of how large he is, how small she feels under the weight of his presence. She wants to touch him, to trace the heavy curve of his shoulder, to bite at his lush mouth and pull him on top of her again.

“Let me,” he says, his voice falling even lower, deeper. “Rey, just let me.”

She closes her eyes, and reaches for the Force, for steadiness and tranquility, but it’s too far away. Even when he gives in to his own light, Kylo somehow pulls her toward the dark. To fear, to fury, to a hatred that he branded into her the day they met _—_ and to some passion that makes her forget everything important.

She shakes her head and backs away. “I can’t.”

Kylo makes a rough noise, weighted with the desire she just denied, so like the sounds he makes when he’s burned and bleeding. He wipes the heel of his hand across his mouth, as if that will erase her kiss. Then he climbs off of the couch, draws himself up to his full height, and says, “Go to bed. We have an early day tomorrow.”

Rey wraps her arms around her chest, seeking her own touch and warmth in lieu of his. “What’s tomorrow?”

Kylo’s smile is dark, wry, and a shade too close to sorrowful for her liking.

“A new beginning,” he says, and leaves her alone with an ache between her legs and a thousand troubled ghosts wrapped around her heart.

.

.

Kylo doesn’t sleep. He can’t stop thinking of Rey, the light and their kiss and the feel of her body under his, hard angles interrupted by soft curves. Her rough hands _—_ a scavenger’s hands, a warrior’s hands _—_ clinging to him.

By morning, he’s exhausted, a pounding headache has built its way behind his eyes, and he’s too sick to his stomach to eat. He pulls on his layers of battle gear, and finally his helmet, all of it armor, only it isn’t injuries he means to protect himself from. It’s the probing gaze of strangers, who would be quick to see the weaknesses written all over him if he could be seen.

He escorts Rey to the hangar, and all the way there she asks where he’s taking her, what they’re doing.

Kylo holds his silence until they’re aboard his shuttle. Then he says, “We’re meeting my knights on a world in the Unknown Regions. Qior is a mostly land-locked planet, but it’s always storming.” He dares to glance at her. “I think you’ll like the rain.”

Rey buckles in behind the pilot’s seat, but before she gets too comfortable he says, “Don’t think about trying to run. This shuttle only lifts off with my handript, and even you couldn’t reprogram it. Besides, if you managed to escape, Ynthica would be half-destroyed before you could warn your people.”

“Why doesn’t Snoke just attack anyway?” Rey asks. “Surely my loyalty isn’t enough to merit holding back an advantage like a surprise attack.”

Kylo turns to her, smiling, not that she can see it under his mask. “Are you trying to convince me to kill your friends?”

“Well they are murderers, traitors, and thieves,” Rey says.

Kylo bites his lip to hold in a laugh. “Impudence isn’t going to get you anywhere, and it won’t save the Resistance if you run.”

Rey stares at him with such open disgust that he wants to recoil. She touched him, looked at him, warm with open tenderness last night, and he misses it. He misses it so much that something like grief pierces him, a sharp, burning ache full of longing.

“How can you threaten the Resistance?” she asks. “I know that parental love is disposable to you, but that’s your _mother_ on Ynthica. A mother who still believes in you, despite everything you’ve done. Do you have any idea how rare that is?”

Kylo turns away. He can’t speak of mothers to Rey, not when his own is safe and sound, while he left hers to rot in a snowy forest, ripped in half by the unstable fire of his lightsaber.

“Leia Organa is not my mother anymore, and your opinion on that is irrelevant. Let it go. We’re jumping to hyperspace in five.”

.

.

Rey recognizes Qior as soon as they’re on the ground. This place is her vision all over again, and she’d never forget it, a blue, storming world, dark except for flashes of lightning.

And the Knights of Ren, all masked, forbidding, and just as connected to the Force as she is. They stand before her, six men cloaked in black, with different weapons in hand, unique blasters, staves, and blades that she couldn’t name, that she’s never seen the like of before.

“We built our weapons ourselves,” says one man. “Same as you and Kylo.”

They name themselves in turn: Syan, Netho, Ernu, Fayanil, Thoral, and Zelon. They seem indifferent to her, all but Zelon, who hesitates long before giving up his name. Then he turns to Kylo and says, “What’s this girl doing here? She’s our enemy, yours most of all.”

“She’s here to become one of us.”

“ _What?_ ”

Rey turns to Kylo, just as he waves his hand lazily toward his shuttle, and a bundle comes flying out of the open hatch, right into his hands. He gives it to her, and she unwraps the cloth to find gear inside, far finer than the basic clothes the First Order had provided. On top of it all is a helmet, glossy and new, untouched, even more skull-like than Kylo’s. The cheeks, nose, and voice modulator are all depressed into the black metal, a death’s-head made into a mask. When lightning illuminates the night, the eye sockets reflect back at her, as shiny as the shells of Goazon beetles.

Kylo grabs her by the arm and drags her close, hard enough to hurt, but as soon as she’s near enough to whisper to, his grip loosens. “Put this on and keep your end of our bargain, so I can tell the Supreme Leader of your compliance. And I’ll give your lance back to you, once this mission is over. For now, you’ll find a quarterstaff onboard; I expect that will do.”

When Kylo releases her, Rey takes the bundle from his hands and turns back to the ship.

“What, you don’t want to change for us?” calls a rough, mechanized voice, the one she recognizes as Zelon’s.

Kylo’s hand reaches out, and Zelon Ren shoots across the muddy ground right into his master’s choking grasp. “Speak to her again, and I’ll put my lightsaber through your heart. Understand?”

He drops Zelon, whose rough gasps resound even over the rain, and waits for him to say, “Yes, Master.”

Aboard the shuttle, Rey takes a steadying breath, changes into the black clothes of a knight, and pulls the helmet over her head. She says, “I’m Rey,” just to test her new voice. It’s nearly as low as a man’s now, made crude with static. An ugly noise that might have made her laugh on another day, but Rey can only think of Zelon Ren. She recognizes him from her vision, remembers him dying on the end of Kylo’s blade.

.

.

Qior is home to an ancient Jedi temple, nearly as old as the ruins on Ahch-To, though not so densely steeped in the Force. Through its windows, Kylo sees the monks, men and women, young and old, mostly human but with a smattering of alien races. They’re all dressed in the same heavy clothes, blue and black like the Qior sky. They are the only people of this world, these monks _—_ they, and the children they’re keeping.

“Stay here,” Kylo says to his knights. “We’ll drive them out to the rest of you. Wait until then.”

No one questions him, no one even speaks. Good; after Zelon’s disrespect, it’s best to keep a tighter hold on his men.

Rey follows him to the back of the temple, then down a flight of stairs to its dungeons.

“Who are these people?” she asks. The mask taints her voice, but it’s still Rey in there, her confidence and stubbornness impossible to bury under a mere modulator.

The stairway is roughened black stone, and Kylo ignites his saber to light their way. “They call themselves the Mashah Hyreen, after a powerful master who led the Jedi in the days of the Old Republic. Master Hyreen believed in the purity of the light, that it should be protected at all costs, never despoiled.”

Rey grabs his arm, stopping him with one touch. Two steps below her, they can stand at the same level, and he wishes they were both unmasked so he could _—_

“But who _are_ they. And why are we here?” she asks.

“They’re people who want to keep the dead ways alive. Don’t worry, they’re very weak in the Force.” He hesitates, considers telling her the truth. “They’ve found other ways to exert their power.”

“Stop being so cryptic. What does that even mean?”

Kylo doesn’t answer. It’s best for Rey to see for herself.

The scarlet light of his saber cuts through the darkness, illuminating their way to the dungeons. Inside, there are ten cells, seven of them occupied. They have no doors, and within each sits a child. The youngest is no more than seven, the eldest perhaps sixteen. All of them are thin, just skin and bones, half-naked on the floor, most curled up in corners. The young ones have black tattoos scattered down to their elbows and knees, while the elder children are marked all the way to their hands and feet. Their eyes are open, but they barely stir at the sound of intruders. They’re awake but listless, blank-eyed, and Kylo can feel what’s been done to them, how they’ve been cut off from the Force. Their hearts beat, they can move and breathe, but they’re disconnected from the life of the galaxy. They may as well be lifeless themselves.

Beside him, Rey rips her helmet off and rushes to a corner to hide her face in her hands. He can hear her gasping, struggling for breath, for composure.

Kylo hurries to her side, and then she rounds on him and asks, “Why would these people do this? It isn’t the way of the Jedi to hurt the innocent.”

“Isn’t it?” he asks. “These children were taken from their homes, same as my grandfather was, and because the Force showed darkly in them early on, this is what was done with them.” Kylo waves toward the cells. “This is peace instead of emotion. Serenity to balance dangerous passions. Harmony to save others from the chaos the dark side could bring.”

Rey shakes her head. “I don’t care what they call it. Jedi way or not, there’s no good in this.”

“But there _is_ light. Feel for it.”

He reaches in the Force himself, alongside Rey, reaching with him. And there it is, the warmth of the light, steadied by the stillness of these children, entwined around but not within them. There is no death here. There is no strength, power, or victory. Only slavery dressed in the guise of peace.

Rey draws away, her mouth open, expression twisted, stricken, and Kylo takes her by the arms. “Listen to me. This is the light at its worst, but I’ve seen the road that leads here. I’ve lived it. When you coerce a child to stifle all that makes him alive, all that makes him _feel_ , what you accomplish is taking the self away. You think Ben Solo died the moment I took on the name Kylo Ren, but you’re wrong. Ben Solo died by inches long before that.”

Rey closes her eyes and leans into him. “Your way is as absolute as this one, but for once, we can agree on something. These people have to be stopped.”

“We aren’t just stopping them,” Kylo says. “We’re killing them. It’s the closest thing to justice that there is.”

“And the children?” she asks.

“Not much can be done for them,” Kylo says. “But we won’t leave them like this.”

.

.

The stormtrooper on Takodana wasn’t her first kill, but it was the easiest. Pulling a trigger and watching a blaster bolt shoot through the air to cut down an enemy is nothing compared to the brutality of beating a man to the ground. Even her lightsaber lance, vicious though it can be, kills far cleaner than a quarterstaff. The weapon Kylo gave her is enhanced in some way that makes it far stronger than the staff she cobbled together on Jakku, but it’s still a bludgeoning weapon, and it disgusts her as much now as it did in the desert, to hear the cracking of ribs and skulls, to watch blood and brains splatter.

The monks are easy prey, really. Kylo was right that they’re low, petty creatures with little strength in the Force. Just enough to put vulnerable, fearful children into a living death. They run outside, into the the rain and the Knights of Ren, and the battle doesn’t last long after that.

Rey loves and hates it, the darkness, the power, the shame that’s coursing through her with each blow. _This is for the Resistance_ , she tells herself. These monks were as evil as any soldier she’s killed, and they don’t deserve to live over kind people like Finn and Poe, like the general or Doctor Kalonia.

She swings her staff and knocks down another man. Her blood feels like it’s burning through her veins, and she can almost taste the grating of her breaths as they heave through her mask’s modulator. There’s a cold fire under her skin, sinking through her flesh, right into her bones, hot and freezing at once. She’s chilled by the shadows settling over her in the Force, but all shadows are cast from light, and there’s heat behind the darkness.

Each person she kills is Unkar Plutt, who set his thugs on her over a deal gone sour. This man is the same as the scavenger who grabbed at her with lust in his eyes; her first kill, who she hit with her quarterstaff until he fell to the sands and didn’t rise. That woman is Devi, the almost-friend who stole the ship Rey had rebuilt, taking off with months of work, a prize worth countless portions and a king’s ransom of supplies.

Passion, strength, victory. That’s what she has, what she knows, what she feels when she strikes the monk at her feet. His cries are distant, far away and easy to ignore. Rey beats him down, but he’s a stubborn thing, and he climbs to his feet, blood running down his blunt, pale face. He tries to throw her back with the Force, but he isn’t strong enough, and suddenly Rey’s fury is too vast for a quarterstaff to excise. She throws it aside without even thinking, raises her hands toward the monk, and _—_

Lightning flashes in the sky, fairest blue, just as lightning from her hands strikes the man at her feet, purple-white and burning, burning, burning, hot and cold, until he stills.

Rey stumbles backward, staring at her own hands, half in wonder and half in terror. She grabs at her helmet, unable to breathe again, like in the temple dungeons, and pulls it off. Rain pricks her face, a sweet, soothing touch after the confines of that smothering mask _—_

And then there’s pain, a radiating, electric shock through her leg that throws her to the ground. She hits the earth hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs, and she remembers that a weapon is being raised behind her _—_ it’s her vision, a knight ready to strike, but Kylo should be here, should kill Zelon Ren, _so where is he?_

Then she hears it: the sound of a lightsaber coming to life, and she turns just in time to see Zelon’s unmasked face as he screams, Kylo’s red blade impaling his own knight’s chest. Zelon falls, and Rey staggers to her feet, but she can barely stand.

Kylo comes toward her, his saber still lit. He extinguishes it at the last moment and sweeps her up into his arms, the way a new husband would carry his bride. It feels startlingly familiar, even though Rey can’t recall him ever holding her this way before.

**.**

**.**


	5. Chapter 5

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**PHASE 1.04 : PROTOSTAR**

_the regions of clouds_

_where stars are forming_

OR

_in the force there is no end_

_only beginnings_

.

.

The Supreme Leader is pleased with Rey’s performance on the mission. Kylo shares every detail of the slaughter on Qior: Rey’s skill and ferocity in battle, Zelon Ren’s disobedience, and the children they liberated from the light.

Snoke nods. “You may make a useful weapon out of the girl yet. But your knights grow unruly. Learn to keep them in order, or I’ll see it done myself.”

“From your will to my hands,” Kylo says.

Snoke dismisses him, but Kylo stays rooted to the audience chamber floor, breathing in the courage to speak again. “And what of the children?”

Silence reigns for a long moment before Snoke says,“It’s a shame, to see the potential of the dark side snuffed out so young, but what’s done is done. The light has outshone the shadows, and you understand as well as I do that these children won’t recover their connection to the Force. But I am merciful; General Hux is making arrangements for them. Leave him to it.”

Kylo bows and says, “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

.

.

The morning after Qior, Rey spends an hour showering, losing herself in the glass-enclosed heat. She’s safe here, alone, beyond Kylo’s watchful eyes and Snoke’s threats. She washes her hands three times, running soap over her rough skin, the callouses and sharp bones, until she can’t feel the pulse of lightning there.

She doesn’t understand it. She almost can’t believe that she killed a man with a dark power she didn’t even know she possessed.

Instead of thinking about it, Rey goes to a training room and practices her forms with her lightsaber lance, which Kylo returned to her, as promised. She considers fighting her way through this base to a ship, but she still has a contingent of stormtroopers dogging her every step, and there’s no chance she could escape without sounding an alarm. A hundred scenarios run through her head, but they all end the same way, with the Resistance in ruins.

Afterward, she goes to the medbay and visits the children. Six of them don’t respond to verbal cues at all, can’t seem to speak, and do nothing that they aren’t prompted to do.

There is one exception, a boy about twelve years old with fewer tattoos than most of the other children. He must not have been among the monks for as long, because he can speak, coherently if dully. When Rey asks to touch him through the Force, she feels the disconnection that she sensed in the dungeons of the Mashah Hyreen temple. The first, ugly thought she has is that it feels like he’s been spiritually castrated, a vital part of his soul—the same vital part that all living things possess—cut away. Pruned by cruel people, as if his bond to the galaxy’s energy was a simple, unwanted weed.

“What’s your name?” Rey asks.

The boy blinks. His voice is sluggish when he says, “I don’t know..” Then quieter, “I try to think of myself as Sul, when I can remember that much.”

_Breathe,_ Rey thinks. _Just breathe._

She knows how that feels, to have to call yourself by a lie. It’s like being stripped down to the lowest part of your person, when the only name you have is one you crafted from whole cloth. But that’s the least of this boy’s suffering.

“Do you know how they did it? How they… hurt you? I’m sorry to ask, but I need to know, if I’m going to have any shot at helping you.”

Sul reaches over, wraps one weak hand around her throat and covers her mouth with the other. “They called me a thing,” he says. “There was a chant, but I can’t remember it all. Just… ‘diminish and diminish and diminish.’”

He squeezes, as hard as he can, Rey thinks, but it’s barely a tickle against her neck. Then he nudges her mouth open, and stupidly, inexplicably, she’s afraid. This child can’t do any harm; even if he wanted to, it’s beyond his capability. But she can’t breathe right with his fragile hands smothering her.

“It felt like drowning,” Sul whispers. “Then, this.”

He pulls his hand away from her mouth in a sharp motion, like he’s drawing the Force out, plucking it from within her.

Sul lets her go and looks down at his lap. “It didn’t take long. Maybe a minute. That’s nothing. How could one minute ruin me forever?”

Rey closes her eyes. She sees her parents’ ship, disappearing into a blue sky. Kylo’s red lightsaber, slashing across her chest on Tatooine.

Sometimes a minute is all it takes.

.

.

Rey has restricted access to the base now (with a contingent of stormtroopers for company, of course), but Kylo finds her in her room.

“I thought you wouldn’t want to see much of this place for awhile,” he says.

Rey is sitting in the middle of the floor, wearing standard black night clothes, curled up in a white blanket. She glances at him, then down at her bare feet. They peek out from underneath the blanket, pink and vulnerable. If she had to run, she couldn’t get far without hurting herself. Not that she would try right now. Her light feels dull, a weak pulse in the Force.

Kylo kneels in front of her, removes his mask, and sets it aside. “Rey. Talk to me.”

She wraps the blanket around herself more tightly. “I don’t know what to think. Those monks… I didn’t know the light could be used that way. It’s no better than—”

Rey doesn’t say more, but Kylo can guess the rest. “No better than what I do?”

She finally meets his eyes, her gaze suddenly stronger, blazing with unmistakeable, unflinching judgement. “Exactly.”

Kylo catches her ankle and squeezes it hard, until she hisses, his touch shackling her to the floor. “Can you really say you’re any better? After everything you did last night?”

She kicks out, shaking off his hand, and climbs to her knees. The white blanket falls away, and Rey pushes at his chest. If she’d put the Force behind it she could have knocked him across the room, but when only the strength of their bodies are pitted against each other, it’s easy for Kylo to grab her arms, to push her to the floor and pin her wrists over her head.

Rey stares up at him, her eyes narrowed and her mouth an angry line, but she doesn’t struggle against him. And when he bends low enough kiss her cheek, she turns into it, not away.

“You can’t pretend it didn’t happen,” Rey whispers. “I know you felt it.”

“I felt more than the light. And so did you.” When he tries to kiss her properly, lips to lips, Rey shakes her head, a low, angry sound caught in her throat.

Kylo releases her, climbs to his feet, and asks, “Why are you fighting this? Much as you hate it, I know you want me too.”

She’s quiet for a long time, before she finally says, “Do you know why I find you so pitiful? It’s because you don’t even want this life. You don’t believe in it. The truth is written all over your face, and it surrounds you in the Force. You regret every terrible thing you’ve done, but you stay in the darkness because you’re even more afraid of the light.”

A sick, cold feeling settles in his stomach. The ice of a hard truth hard won. “Rey—”

“You’re a coward,” she says. “What makes you think I could ever want a coward?”

She remains lying on the floor, arms stretched over her head, yet even at his feet she stands above him.

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There are more missions. Dark deeds that Rey carries out with Kylo and the other knights, her face hidden under a mask. She’s the newest enemy of the Resistance, the next name to be feared throughout the galaxy: Kira Ren.

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	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for dub-con in this chapter. See the end notes for details.

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**PHASE 1.05 : GRAVITY**

_a mutual force of nature_

_that causes two bodies to attract each other_

OR

_I perceive in all things this truth:_

_that we are forever bound to the Force_

_and that the Force forever binds us together_

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Tonight is the second anniversary of the Hosnian system’s destruction. The First Order marks this moment as the end of the New Republic and the advent of the New Empire—a nominal title, Rey knows, since the galaxy is still a mess of conflicting alliances with no organized imperial structure.

When she heard of this party two weeks ago, it sickened her, but Kylo made it clear that her attendance wasn’t optional. So, as much as she hates it, Rey dresses in her freshest clothes and ties her hair up into its usual three buns.

She’s just about to leave when her door slides open, admitting a silver service droid. He deposits two packages on her sitting room couch—one long and narrow, the other small and square—and says, “Gifts from Master Ren.”

“Gifts?” Rey opens the larger package and sifts through the layers of feathery tissue paper. Underneath lies a sleek, long-sleeved white gown. She touches the skirt and finds that it’s impossibly soft and smooth, barely discernible between her fingers, like mist made into fabric. Some kind of shimmersilk—a term she’s only come to know through witnessing Leia’s wardrobe over the last couple of years.

As beautiful as this gift is, Rey understands the implications of its delivery well enough. She isn’t allowed to attend this party dressed in an everyday outfit, to subtly disrespect the importance of the celebration by wearing common clothes.

And there’s something else here, an assertion of power and intimacy. He’s dressing her, exerting his control and making the most basic of her choices for her. It’s insulting enough that Rey almost leaves the gift in its box.

Curiosity gets the better of her. She dismisses the droid, undresses, and gingerly slips into the gown. It’s ostensibly modest, the collar high enough to be demure, the skirt and sleeves both flowing and floor-length; but her back is completely bared, and the fabric is so light that she feels naked.

It fits almost perfectly, and Rey blushes to think that Kylo Ren had something like _this_ made for her. Maybe his intention was to discomfit her, but she can’t imagine why he’d bother. Nothing is likely to make her more uncomfortable than going to a party celebrating the destruction of a planetary system, the wasteful elimination of billions of lives.

No, she expects that his motivation was of a more personal nature. He’s dressed her this way simply because he wants to see her draped in silk. Because he desires to watch her walk around, vulnerable and exposed, her body on display for him. That ought to disgust her, and it does, but not as much as it should.

She finds it curious that he chose to dress her in white.

The door slides open again, and she knows without turning around that it’s him.

“Do you like it?” Kylo asks, and beneath the mechanical interference of his voice modulator she can hear a strange tenderness.

This gown is the finest thing she’s ever worn, but Rey barely feels like herself in it. “No,” she says. “I don’t.”

“That’s a shame,” he says evenly. Then she feels the pressure of his gloved hand on her bare back, and the warmth of him, even through a layer of leather, makes her shiver. “You’re beautiful.”

It’s the first time anyone has ever said that to her, and her stomach flutters at the compliment. Rey doesn’t even think to doubt his sincerity, because he has no good reason to say such a thing if he doesn’t mean it.

She turns around, looks up into the unforgiving mask that shields his face. It could be easy to forget there’s a man under there—a handsome man who finds her beautiful—but somehow, even at his worst, Kylo Ren is always reminding her of his humanity.

He’s discarded his daily clothes for something finer too. Unrelenting black that covers him from head to toe, as usual, but his formalwear is immaculately made and well cared for, unlike his typical battle-worn gear. Still a creature in a mask, of course, but it’s easier to see the lines of his powerful body in these clothes—

Rey finds white shoes in the smaller package. She slips them on and wavers a little with her first few steps, unused to the impractical heels, but her natural grace keeps her from tripping.

While she’s still steadying herself, Kylo reaches over and carefully pulls the three bands from her hair so that it falls around her shoulders.

“Anything else?” Rey asks. “Want to powder my face?”

He makes a short sound that might be a laugh, but it’s difficult to tell through the static encumbrance of his mask’s modulator. Kylo runs his gloved fingers through her hair, his gentle touch at odds with the violent man himself.

“We’re late,” he says, releasing her.

As if punctuality is ever a concern for Kylo Ren. He makes his own time, and the rest of this base scrambles to accommodate him.

Rey follows him to the ballroom, but she can’t keep up with his strong, purposeful strides in her heels. Kylo makes an impatient sound when he has to stop for the third time for her to catch up.

“If you wanted me to hurry, you shouldn’t have hobbled me in these horrible shoes,” Rey says.

The ballroom is vast and well-appointed, like everything else here, but it lacks the cold, clinical air of military efficiency that permeates the rest of the base. First Order banners drape the walls, the black tile floor reflects ruby lights overhead, and long tables are laden with every kind of food Rey could possibly imagine.

It seems wrong to eat even a bite of this feast, considering what it’s in honor of, but she spent too many years starving on Jakku to ever pass up food. So Rey loads a plate with steamed vegetables, fresh fruit, and three kinds of meat, and takes a seat at a solitary round table in the corner.

Kylo joins her while she’s working on her second serving. He doesn’t eat, of course. That would require removing his helmet in front of his underlings, revealing that there’s nothing beneath that mask but a young man who has to eat to live, just like everyone else.

“I can feel your disdain from here,” he says dryly.

Rey chews juicy dark meat of unknown origin and says, around her mouthful, “You’re passing up food this good because you don’t want people to see your face. It’s ridiculous.”

Even without the luxury of witnessing his expression, she can tell he’s mildly put-off by her table manners. “Got a problem with the way I eat?”

Rey ignores the silverware and stuffs her next bite into her mouth bare-handed. This is how she’s always taken her meals, and she isn’t about to change her methods to impress Kylo Ren.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to—?” He cuts himself off, perhaps realizing the stupidity of his question.

“We can’t all have princesses for mothers,” she says.

His relaxed hand, resting atop the table, curls into a fist. “Don’t,” he warns.

Part of her wants to provoke him further, just to see what kind of reaction she can draw from him. Kylo is so volatile, so easily pushed to brutality, and it never takes much to set him off. It would be easy to make him flip this table, simple and satisfying and a little bit fun.

_What’s wrong with me?_ Rey thinks. Since when did she take pleasure in another person’s brokenness? _I’ve been here too long._

“You can’t hide in this corner all night,” he says, and she can tell from the spiteful tone of his voice that whatever good mood he’d been in has dissipated, ruined by the mention of his mother.

“What do you want me to do?” Rey asks. “Dance with the general? Raise a glass of wine to your New Empire?”

Out of what must be plain meanness, Kylo takes her by the arm and pulls her over to where Hux stands. She listens to the general gloat about the fall of the Senate for a full five minutes before she excuses herself, heart pounding, and goes to the bar.

A Twi’lek serves her a small glass of icy white liquor. It tastes like fuel and burns all the way down, despite its coldness, but Rey drinks it greedily. She orders a second, and just as she raises the frosted glass to her lips, she _feels_ him. Sure enough, Kylo’s strong arms reach around her, black gloved hands grasping the bar on either side of where she sits.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Drinking,” she says. “Isn’t that what people do at parties?”

She sips the freezing liquor and wishes it were harder. She’s twenty-one and she’s never been drunk before—despite Finn and Poe’s best efforts—but she thinks she might like to get drunk tonight. To forget where she is and the predicament she’s in.

“Let’s go,” Kylo says, and he takes her by the arm again, pulls her to her feet.

Rey doesn’t need telling twice. She’d rather be anywhere in the galaxy besides this party, and she’ll take the first opportunity to leave.

Instead of going to her own quarters, Rey follows him to his living room, kicks off her shoes, and takes a seat on the couch, making herself comfortable. Thanks to the liquor, her world seems a shade warmer than usual, easier to settle into, but she also feels so alone that it’s hard to breathe.

Kylo removes his mask, sets it aside, and runs a hand through his thick hair, pulling it hard. Then he goes to a cabinet and takes out a bottle. He downs a whole glass of red wine in one go, and Rey finds herself watching him: the long line of his throat, working as he swallows; the darkness of his beauty marks, stark against his fair skin. He pours a second glass, which he drinks more patiently. She expects him to sit, but Kylo merely leans against the wall across from her, nursing his wine.

He watches her as closely as she watches him, his dark gaze running the length of her body. If she had any doubts about his motivation for dressing her like this, they’re dispelled now. Kylo can’t hide anything when he’s not wearing that wretched mask—his face is too vulnerable and expressive to conceal his feelings—and it’s painfully obvious that he wants to fuck her.

Rey crosses and uncrosses her legs, simply because she wants to see how he’ll react. Kylo shifts uncomfortably, finishes off his glass of wine, and pours a third with unsteady hands. Again, she feels that shameful urge to provoke him. So, just to watch him squirm, Rey leans back on her hands, thrusting her small breasts forward.

“Stop that,” he says, but his voice breaks on the command, undermining any authority his words might have conveyed.

“Stop what?” Rey asks, even as she tilts her head to the side, offering her neck for his examination.

He flings his glass across the room and it shatters against the wall, staining the durasteel with a splatter of red. It doesn’t frighten her, his temperamentality, even though it probably should. Rey can only find a strange sense of satisfaction in driving him to violence so easily.

Kylo strides over, then drops to his knees between her legs. He grabs at her dress, rucking it up around her waist, and kisses the inside of her thigh. His full mouth is wet and hungry on her skin, sloppy in his eagerness to taste her. Rey grabs his hair and yanks hard enough to pull a whimper from him, a sad little sound that makes her feel powerful.

He reaches for the fastening of his pants with shaking hands, but she says, “Don’t bother. I’m not giving you anything.”

“Please,” he says. He sounds so pathetically needful, and Rey wonders if it shames him to be on his knees, begging her like this. She hopes so.

He grips her thighs and spreads her legs wide. “Just let me touch you.”

She shouldn’t even consider it, Rey knows that, but she wants to take advantage of this great man’s desperation. To degrade him, use him, _own_ him. To get back at him for caging her in this terrible place.

“I’ll do anything you want,” Kylo promises. “Anything.”

Rey puts her foot in the middle of his chest and pushes him backward. “Take off your clothes,” she orders. “All of them.”

Kylo climbs to his feet and strips out of his formalwear, piece by piece, until he stands before her naked. He’s tall, broad-shouldered and well-muscled, as beautiful as Rey imagines a man could be, but she’s distracted by his scars. She’s already seen them, of course, a hundred tally marks scored on his skin like the countless days she recorded on her AT-AT wall.

Rey swallows, her desire to humiliate him dampened by the sight of Snoke’s abuse, and she has to glance away.

Kylo returns to his knees, then tugs her panties down her legs until they’re dangling from her left ankle. He stares at her sex while he bites at his lower lip, and Rey can’t wait any longer.

“Put your mouth on me,” she says.

Kylo kisses her between her legs, and just the sight of his dark head bent, that generous mouth of his working on her, makes her shiver. Rey can hear the sounds of his wet little licks on her, and it feels so good, so sweet, that she almost can’t take it.

She’s always been too busy, first with surviving, then training with Luke and serving the Resistance, to ever indulge in this kind of intimacy. It bothers her that Kylo is the only man to touch her this way, but not enough to make her stop him.

He kisses and teases her, driving her closer to the edge with every caress. Rey bites her lip to keep from whimpering and grabs at his soft hair.

“That’s not enough,” she says. “I need more.”

Kylo slides two fingers inside of her, thrusts them in and out roughly while he sucks and licks at her. Rey shouts, a cry borne half from pleasure and half from pain. “Gentler,” she whispers. “It hurts.”

He stops and looks up at her, eyes wide. “You haven’t—?”

“No,” Rey says, her cheeks hot.

Kylo licks his lips, glistening with her wetness, and pumps his fingers into her slowly but deeply. Rey shudders, mouth open on a wordless cry.

“You’ve never done anything like this before, but you’d give your body to me?” he asks.

She can hear the possessive pride in his voice, and it annoys her. “This isn’t giving,” Rey says, breathless, as she bucks against his hand. “This is taking.”

He fucks her with his fingers so tenderly that it aches, that she’s trembling all over and biting back tears. It feels as though her body is unraveling around the points where he touches her, like the rest of her doesn’t even exist, and Rey bites her fist to keep from screaming as the pleasures crests.

She’s still reeling from her climax when she catches Kylo taking his cock in hand. “No,” Rey says. “You don’t get to do that.”

He keeps stroking himself, maybe too desperate for release to follow her orders.

“If you come right now, I’ll never let you touch me again,” Rey says.

Kylo groans, and the noise is startlingly similar to the grunts of pain and frustration he made when they grappled in the snow on Starkiller. He lets go of his cock and hisses, “You’re a cruel, selfish girl.”

“Maybe so, but you don’t deserve any better.” Rey cups his cheek to take some of the sting from her words.

Then she opens her legs wider, guides his hand back to her sex, and says, “Now do it again.”

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm tagging all of Rey and Kylo's sexual encounters on Eridox Base dub-con because Rey is being held there against her will. Although she says yes to the sex, it's complicated by the fact that she lacks the freedom to leave.


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